Teaching

The meaning of the phrase learning to teach seems clear and straightforward, but in fact, its definition raises a host of empirical, conceptual, and normative questions. What do teachers need to know, care about, and be able to do in order to teach effectively in different contexts? How do teachers build a strong teaching practice and develop a professional identity over time? What role should teacher education play in learning to teach? How do the conditions of teaching shape the content of teacher learning? How do views of teaching shape theories of learning to teach?

Learning to teach is an emerging priority for policymakers and educational reformers. For example, the report of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, issued in 1996, placed teacher learning at the heart of its comprehensive blueprint for reform. The report asserts that what students learn is directly related to what teachers teach, and what teachers teach depends on the knowledge, skills, and commitments they bring to their teaching.

Myths About Learning to Teach

Conventional wisdom about learning to teach is rooted in social attitudes toward teaching and the experience of being a student. Some of these ideas contain half truths; some have influenced educational policy.

Teachers are born, not made. Some people believe that the ability to teach is a natural endowment like being musical. Some teachers seem to be "naturals" and some theorists posit an innate tendency in human beings to explain things. Even the founders of the common school believed that teaching was "women's true profession" because it tapped their instinct for nurturing the young. Still, the belief that teachers are born, not made rests on a narrow view of the intellectual and personal requirements of teaching. It ignores the growing understanding of teaching as a complex, uncertain practice, and minimizes the role of professional education on the grounds that the practice of teaching cannot be taught.

If you know your subject, you can teach it. Whatever else teachers need to know, they need to know their subjects. There are teachers whose abundant knowledge and love of their subject make them extremely effective even though they have had no special preparation for teaching. Other teachers who possess extensive subject matter knowledge are unable to present this knowledge clearly or help others learn it. Research is beginning to clarify what it means to "know" one's subject for purposes of teaching it, and why conventional measures of subject matter knowledge are problematic.

Historically, a liberal arts education was considered sufficient preparation for teaching secondary school. Policies that require academic majors for both elementary and secondary teaching candidates represent a contemporary variation on this theme. There is mounting evidence of teachers with a major in their subject not being able to explain fundamental concepts in that subject; this situation raises questions about such policies.

Scholars have identified three dimensions of subject matter knowledge for teaching: knowledge of central facts, concepts, theories and procedures; knowledge of explanatory frameworks that organize and connect ideas within a given field; and knowledge of the rules of evidence and proof in a given field. How is a proof in mathematics different from a historic explanation or a literary interpretation? In addition, teachers must be able to look at their subjects through the eyes of students, anticipating what students might find difficult or confusing, framing compelling purposes for studying particular content, and understanding how ideas connect across fields and relate to everyday life. Future teachers are unlikely to acquire this kind of knowledge in academic courses.

Teacher education prepares people to teach. Whereas the previous myths reflect considerable skepticism about teacher education, this myth reflects confidence that pre-service programs prepare people to teach. The typical program consists of a two-year sequence of education courses and field experiences. Common components include educational psychology, general and subject specific methods, and student teaching. What these components consist of varies across institutions.

Some studies show that teacher education is a weak intervention compared with the socializing effects of teachers' own elementary and secondary schooling, and the influence of on-the-job experience. Other studies suggest that intense, coherent teacher education programs do make a difference. Even the best program, however, cannot prepare someone to teach in a particular setting. Some of the most important things teachers need to know are local and can only be learned in context. Pre-service preparation can lay a foundation for this complex, situation-specific work, but the early years of teaching are an intense and formative phase in practice of learning to teach.

Phases in Learning to Teach

It is hard to say when learning to teach begins. From an early age, people are surrounded by teaching on the part of parents and teachers, and these early experiences with authority figures unconsciously shape teachers' pedagogical tendencies. The experience of elementary and secondary schooling has a particularly strong impact. From thousands of hours of teacher watching, prospective teachers form images of teaching, learning, and subject matter that influence their future practice unless professional education intervenes.

Liberal studies affect the way teachers think about knowledge and approach the teaching of academic content, although not always in educative directions. At their best, education courses and field experiences cultivate a professional understanding of and orientation toward teaching. Learning to teach begins in earnest when novices step into their own classroom and take up the responsibilities of full-time teaching.

Efforts to describe the stages teachers go through in learning to teach generally posit an initial stage of survival and discovery, a second stage of experimentation and consolidation, and a third stage of mastery and stabilization. These stages are loosely tied to years of experience, with stabilization occurring around the fifth year of teaching. Self-knowledge is a major outcome of early teaching. Novices craft a professional identity through their struggles with and explorations of students and subject matter. Over time, teachers develop instructional routines and classroom procedures and learn what to expect from their students. Experience generally yields greater self-confidence, flexibility, and a sense of professional autonomy. After five to seven years most teachers feel they know how to teach. Whether we call these teachers "masters" or "experts" depends on what kind of teaching is valued and how mastery and expertise are defined.

Models of teacher development serve as a reminder that the process of learning to teach extends over a number of years; however, the current structure of professional education and the conditions of beginning teaching do not reflect this. Continuity of learning opportunities between pre-service preparation and new teacher induction is rare. The assignment of beginning teachers does not reflect their status as learners. Most beginning teachers have the same responsibilities as their more experienced colleagues, and often get the most difficult classes because they lack seniority.

The rise of formal induction programs signals a recognition on the part of some educators and policymakers that learning to teach occurs during the early years of teaching. About thirty states have support systems for beginning teachers and most urban districts offer some induction support, usually in the form of mentor teachers. Still, few programs rest on a robust understanding of teacher learning or help novices learn the kind of ambitious teaching advocated by reformers. Many programs treat induction as short-term support designed to ease the novice into full-time teaching.

What might a developmental curriculum for learning to teach entail? Which tasks belong to initial preparation and which to the induction phase? Despite gaps in knowledge and a lack of consensus about the best ways to prepare teachers and support their learning over time, it is possible to conceptualize a continuum of learning opportunities for teachers.

Teacher Preparation and Learning to Teach

If teachers are to learn a version of teaching that they have not experienced as pupils, they need to develop new frames of reference for interpreting what goes on in classrooms and making decisions about what and how to teach. Positioned between teachers' past experience as students and their future experience as teachers, university-based teacher education is well situated to encourage this shift in thinking. Unless pre-service teachers reconstruct their early beliefs about teaching, learning, students, and subject matter, continuing experience will solidify these beliefs, making them even less susceptible to change.

A second task of teacher preparation particularly suited to university-based study is helping future teachers develop conceptual and pedagogical knowledge of their teaching subjects. Current educational reforms have prompted renewed interest in teachers' subject matter knowledge because they call for a kind of teaching that engages students not only in acquiring knowledge, but also in building and communicating about knowledge. This task depends on contributions from arts and sciences, and education.

To build bridges between subject matter and students, teachers must understand what children are like at different ages, how they make sense of their world, how their ways of thinking and acting are shaped by their language and culture, how they gain knowledge and skills, and develop confidence as learners. This background knowledge becomes increasingly critical as teachers work with children whose racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds differ from their own.

In order to learn from teaching, teacher candidates must develop the necessary tools and dispositions. This includes skills of observation, interpretation and analysis, the habit of supporting claims about student learning with evidence, the willingness to consider alternative explanations. If teacher candidates work on these skills with others, they may begin to see colleagues as resources in learning to teach.

Although teachers need to know many things, effective teaching depends on the ability to use knowledge appropriately in particular situations. Pre-service teachers can begin developing a repertoire of approaches to curriculum, instruction, and assessment during pre-service preparation. Learning to adapt and use this knowledge in practice is an appropriate task for teacher induction.

Teacher Induction and Learning to Teach

Induction happens with or without a formal program; however, the presence of a strong program can minimize the survival mentality that grips so many beginning teachers and orient their learning in productive directions. Beginning teachers need to learn the goals and standards for students at their grade level, and how these expectations fit into a larger framework of curriculum and assessment. They must get to know their students and community, and figure out how to use this knowledge in developing a responsive curriculum.

If teacher preparation has been successful, beginning teachers will have a vision of good teaching and a beginning repertoire consistent with that vision. A major task for beginning teachers is acquiring the local understandings and developing the flexibility of response to enact this repertoire. The challenges of teaching alone for the first time can discourage new teachers from trying ambitious pedagogies. Induction support can keep them from abandoning such approaches in favor of what they perceive as safer, less complex activities. It can also help novices focus on the purposes and not just the management of learning activities and their meaning for students.

To teach in ways that respond to students and move learning forward, teachers must be able to elicit and interpret students' ideas and generate appropriate teaching moves as the lesson unfolds. Listening to what students say and constructing responses on a moment-to-moment basis; and attending to the needs of the group while attending to individuals requires considerable skill and practice: It represents a demanding learning task for beginning teachers. Beginning teachers must create and maintain a classroom learning community that is safe, respectful, and productive of student learning. Issues of power and control lie at the heart of this task that is tied up with novices' evolving professional identity. Often beginning teachers struggle to reconcile competing images of their role as they evolve a coherent professional stance.

If teachers are asked how they learned to teach, they will say they learned to teach by teaching. Although experience plays an important role in learning to teach, there is a big difference between "having" experience and learning desirable lessons from that experience. To learn from the experience of teaching, teachers must be able to use their practice as a site for inquiry. This means turning confusions into questions, experimenting with new approaches and studying the effects, and framing new questions to extend their understanding.

The ongoing study and improvement of teaching is difficult to accomplish alone. Teachers need opportunities to talk with others about teaching, to analyze samples of student work, to compare curricular materials, to discuss problems and consider different explanations and actions. Many reformers believe that this kind of intellectual work can best be accomplished by groups of teachers working together over time.